William's GO, DOG. GO! Party

I love original parties. This party was for William, Frances's son, who turned 2 today. I helped Frances with Alexa's butterfly/dragonfly birthday party last fall. This party was based on Go, Dog. Go by P.D. Eastman. Sure, there are a lot of inspirations for doggy parties, but there are elements from the book. The cars, the stoplight, the party hats... The color theme of the decorations and food are based on the book cover.

Dessert Table: paper cones w/puppy chow, stoplight pretzel sticks, "Go, Dog. Go" cake, oreo pops and cupcakes, strawberry and chocolate cakeballs, lollies and doggy bone treats, and 2-layer striped jello jigglers.

monkey and mod!

Cake for Charlie, Jammie's son! We love Curious George!

Very chic, mod, and too cute baby shower cake! I love polka dots (if you can't tell with most of my cakes) and this cake for Sam's baby shower is one of my favorites. :)

Chamryn's Superhero Party!

My baby turned 3 last week and last weekend we celebrated her birthday with a Superhero themed party. My girl is a girly girl who likes Princesses and Dora, but she also likes Handy Manny and Thomas... She's a very much a girly girl who loves shoes (like her mommy) but is also a fearless stunt-toddler (like her daddy). So I thought a Superhero party is the most fitting. Regardless of the theme, I had picked out teal and pink as a color scheme probably way back in January. I love the color combination and the colors just fit my daughter's personality. Bold. Unique. Girly. Amazingly, all the decor was budget friendly as most of it were from clearance sales and Target's $1 aisle. :)

The Invitations Molly created this drawing of Chamryn for her invitations in exchange for a cake for her son, Jude. I created the invitations and printed on 4x6 photo paper. Unfortunately, I was terribly busy in May (I wonder why) and forgot to mail them out (OOPS!). Thank goodness for Facebook Events for easy invitations and RSVPs! :)

The Table

The dessert table is inpired by many many dessert tables on the party blog circuit. Incorporating the teal, fuschia pink and touches of green and orange.

The spread....

Cakeballs. Oreo Pops. Layered Jello. Chocolate-covered Pretzels. Lollipop Topiary. and Cake(s).

The cake(s).
Chamryn couldn't make up her mind when it came to her cake. Thankfully, after weeks of demanding Handy Manny and Dora, she was adamant about Tinkerbell and Ariel. I tried to incorporate the two in one cake, but I gave up and just separated the cakes using the colors to get make it cohesive. I also knew that I wouldn't have time to make a fondant Ariel or Tink, so I broke down and purchased cake toppers.

Here is my girl straightening the food tags. (LOL)

Lollipop topiary.

Its basically a TON of DumDums stuck on a styrofoam ball. It was very fun to make! You can also see the cakeballs and chocolate pretzels and food tags.

Oreo Pops.

Use double-stuffed Oreos and lollipop sticks, dip in chocolate and decorate

The Capes

As favors, my friend Bethany sewed more than 20 capes and some of the older kids decorated their capes with foam letters

(Mighty B: Thank You for your perserverance and patience with the fabric I chose!)

As favors I gave out simple bags with sidewalk chalk and playdough and also bags of Superhero Snacks filled with Chamryn's favorite snacks. Cheez-Its, juice, suckers and a granola bar.

Happy Birthday, our baby girl!

More May Madness...

Did I mention that May is crazy busy with birthdays? My long-time BFF (since 7th grade, Industrial Tech, 6th Period, 1993) had her baby on my daughter's 2nd birthday. Crazy, huh? Anyway, for Colt's birthday, Steph had threw a kitty/puppy party.

Colt's Smash Cake

Doggy Cupcakes

Baby Shower cake for Sarah... There was supposed to be a palm tree... but it fell... :(

cake for my mom's boss... I didn't have time to put all the letters on the keys, but I think I still captured the likeness of a Blackberry phone.

Molly (Jude's Mom) is a classmate of mine from highschool. She's an awesome artist who helped me by drawing Chamryn's Superhero artwork for her party in exchange for a cake. "Yay!" for bartering! Jude's cake... Spencer! (Thomas the Tank Engine's friend)

My good friends, Josh and Janine, threw a ninja/Asian/dragon party for their son, Xander. He had just recently watched the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" (or something like that) and had asked if I can do "Toothless"... So this is my attempt at Toothless the dragon... not having watched the movie, I think I did an okay job.

Pretty in pink...

Bridal shower cake...

With coordinating cakeballs

Say Cheese, Cake! :)

Audrey's 1st Communion

Last weekend, a friend's daughter also had a first communion... I absolutely love the colors of the cake: Orange, Pink, Peach

And of course... matching cake balls... so yummy....

Grayson's Handy Manny Cake!

My good friend Jenn threw a Handy Manny Party for her son Grayson. Grayson was born 2 weeks before Chamryn. The first of many many many... many... birthday parties in May. The cake was fun to make. There's Pat, Filippe, Turner and Dusty. I wish I had time to make the other ones, Stretch (measuring tape), Rusty and something... (wrench and pliers)... The sides of the toolbox were challenging, I ended up using cardboard for the sides and dowel rod for the handle. I'm not sure what to do the next time I need to do a Handy Manny cake... which would probably be in a couple weeks for my own daughter's Superhero Party. Because she wants a Handy Manny cake. And Tinkerbell. And Dora. And Ariel. Not sure which parent she takes after, because she can't seem to make up her mind.
I wish I had taken more pictures of the different elements Jenn had at her party. Maybe I can get some pictures from her or something. She used diner baskets with red and white checked wax paper for hotdogs and chips. Favor bags decorated with stickers, hand drawn tools on the wall, etc. Here is my daughter with a construction hat and an apron belt they used to put their candy during the piñata.

Girly Bowling Cake

This cake was Wendy's cake. She loves to bowl and likes the colors green, purple, blue and orange. I think I was able to cram everything in this 6" cake. I also made cupcakes for her party at the bowling alley. It was a fun party... my husband and I went with our 2 year old daughter, 3 year old nephew, and my friend's 6 month old in tow. You can just imagine the fun we had... I had baby duty so unfortunately, the hubby got stuck wrangling toddlers!

Party plans... with an Invitation Teaser!

My daughter's birthday party is a month away! I'm super excited. More importantly, she is too! Its a superhero theme... no specific characters like Batman or Superman/girl, no primary red/blue colors or frilly Supergirl baby pink. It will be teal and hot pink, with touches of green and orange.

Or it was supposed to be Superhero theme. However, my daughter is adamant about a Handy Manny party. Or Dora and Boots. But mostly Handy Manny. With Tinkerbell cupcakes. *sigh*. When Grayson (a friends son who also has a May birthday) told her HE's having a Handy Manny party and that is for boys, she was in tears! So somehow, I have to integrate Handy Manny and Dora and Boots. I'm thinking of putting toys on top of the cake (*gasp!!*) (or around the cake), with Manny, Dora, and Boots with fondant capes! and Tinkerbell Cupcakes. We can't forget about that. So after discussing it with my daughter (ie try to brainwash her that she actually likes superheros), it will be SuperManny, SuperBoots, SuperDora party!

Anyway, back to Superheroes... I found an inspiration board from The Party Dress and I partnered with Bethany at Tales of The Might B w/a barter agreement that she would sew some capes for me and for her son's birthday cake (see Riley's Thomas cake). One of my super creative classmates from high school, Miss Molly, and I also worked out a deal (cuz I'm all about deals!) She is working on a cartoon of my daughter in exchange for a cake for her son's birthday, which, of course, is also in May. Here's a little look on her artwork!

Mod Baby Shower Cake

This was Danielle's baby shower cake. Miranda and a couple girls were hosting the shower and had asked me to do the cake. They had a specific cake in mind... so I sketched it up on SketchUp first. (We use SketchUp to do 3D design renderings of houses and buildings at work-- my REAL job. I love the program so much that I downloaded it on my home computer and use it for cakes!)


Here is the sketch:

Miranda later mailed me an invitation so I can match the green... and good thing she did because I was picturing more of a limey green instead of a light sage green. :)

So here is the cake:

I totally forgot to take a picture after I had stacked it and put it together. I had permission to "steal" this from Danielle's facebook... Then I noticed her Menu/game packet and favor box? Look familiar? Look here and here. :) I am sooooo flattered! :)

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 4...

The final class of Course 1... and we're tackling... the dreaded Wilton Rose... duh du dummmm.... Things started out rough... my icing was a little thin, so the bases were flopping over and the petals were flopping over, leading to roses that look like... well... smooshed, hot pink cabbages.

After a few more roses, I got a little bit better... now my roses look like a rose/carnation hybrid, but at least its not flopping over.



The picture below is my friend Tomi's roses...

To compare to my roses... which look like... CARNATIONS! AAAH!!!

So... we did it. We finished Course 1 and accomplished The Rose.

And Tomi and I are crazy enough to take Course 2 in May... Yup. The same month that my friends and I decided collectively (not really) to have babies, therefore having parties every weekend that month. I will have 9 cakes to do next month. Yes, NINE. and 4 birthday parties. I love my friends, but our next babies will not fall in the same month ever again!

Spring Cake Balls

My daughter didn't nap today at daycare, so she fell asleep early, giving me the opportunity to work on cake balls for a recipe swap for my Mom's Group. I was able to make it a little bit more ornate than my normal ball and sprinkles. Bakerella had done Easter/Spring cake pops last year and I've wanted to try them. I have done cake pops in the past and have concluded that putting them on a lollipop stick is a paaaain and the time they take is twice as long as cake balls.

So here they are: Spring Chicks and Easter Eggs...

I double dipped the eggs so the white confectionary coating is nice and thick that they look like real eggs.

Cake Ball guts.... strawberry cake.

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 3

This was a fun class. We covered shell borders, star flowers, swirl flowers, "clowns", and touched on the base of the dreaded Wilton Rose... (insert suspenseful music here.)

So Janet (my coworker) sent me a text message last night telling me that she'd take the cakes if no one had asked for them yet (I was giving away my class cakes rather than eating them.) She said that Ben, a student that lives with them, is having a birthday on Sunday. I told her that we're practicing clowns and flowers, so I'll try to make it as masculine as I can...

Meet my icing man... I thought those Wilton clowns were creepy (no offense to those who think they are cute) so I just Joann showed us how to pile on the icing for his body and pipe his arms and legs and I swirled on a head, and Voila! You can call him Sugar Daddy. :)

Octo-icing... Did you know PETA is giving the Octomom money and supplies of veggie burgers and hotdogs to put a sign on her yard about animal neutering? huh. heard it in the news today before heading out to cake class.

Behold my shell border.... I've been doing it wrong all along, I was pulling my frosting bag up and down to force the wave, but you're supposed to just squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull...

Its blue and green... its about as masculine as I can get it for Ben on Class 3... with dropped flowers...

Ruth's Castle Cake

This was a very special cake personally... Ruth hugged me so tightly I teared up a little. :)

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 2

This is probably the most I'll be writing in this blog... so if you want to skip all the blah blah blahs you can scroll down to the pictures below. :) I would.

So I decided to take the plunge and take a cake decorating class to learn and practice buttercream skills. Week 1 was just an intro to the class, then a demonstration of how to frost a layered cake, and talk about buttercream and different consistencies. I've heard that the first week is like an informercial for Wilton products, but our instructor, Joann, wasn't pushy at all. She went over what tools are helpful to her, what we needed in class, what we won't use, etc. I learned a couple new things, like cake boards are food safe and do not need to be covered in between tiered cakes but covered for finished cakes. I also learned how to make buttercream,up to now, I've always bought BC (buttercream--remember that, I'll be using that abbreviation from now on!) since I'm lazy and I want to get to decorating right away.

Last night, Patrick helped me bake my cake since I worked late then had to jet over Angi's house for a Senscy open house. This "homework" cake was supposed to be baked and frosted before class. We also had to make BC in 3 different consistencies. I'm so sooooo thankful that I received my KA (KitchenAid) mixer for my birthday from my mom or else I'd probably just have thrown the whole BC thing out the window. I've done it before. Attempted to make frosting and failed and it went into the trash. Not out the window. But I was tempted. Anyway, back to my homework... Then I took an hour getting my supplies ready in my nifty Cubs reusable bag (Go Cubs!). It felt like getting ready for the first day of school. Tomi and I were texting each other asking how each other's BC went and what to bring and so on.

So, on to Class time...

This was my frosted cake. Since I am doing a cake every class, I just planned on giving them away. This week was for my coworker, Janet. She had a recipe for a quick chocolate orange rum cake using orange cake mix, chocolate pudding and rum. It is yummy. I used a chocolate filling and covered it in BC. And I used the super duper Viva trick to make it smooth. (Questions about it? Google it, its 12:04am and I don't have time to write about it... Maybe later... or next month.)

This is our handy dandy practice board. Its got a plastic cover... we practiced star tipping (yay!--yeah, that's sarcasm), dots (harder than it seems!) and handwriting (need more practice! I stink! I love my architecture handwriting, but hate writing on cakes) The nifty thing about this board was that when you were done, we scraped off the BC and did it all over again! and again! and again!
I'm practicing Teddy Bears there... supposedly, when you do the dots/circles, the upward pointy thing should not be there. You know what they say... practice makes perfect...

So I need more practice.... see my dots? pointy pointy pointy! The picture doesn't do it justice, but its actually teal and pink. I love teal. Chamryn's birthday party will be teal and pink...

Can you tell that I don't proofread/revise my blogs? I go off in tangents--I must focus!

Focus on this: star tips...

star. star. star. star.. star.. star.. star... star... star...

It was so much fun though. I can't wait for next week. We have a choice of doing cakes or cupcakes.

Oh, and Ruth's Castle cake is on its way! I started the towers tonight... Will finish it tomorrow night... probably will be a late night since I want to take Chamryn to play at the playground while the weather is still nice... I'm hearing a bad 4 letter word is coming back... (snow) so I wan to at least play once this week!

Stay tuned!

Did you really read all that? Wow! You deserve a cookie. Or a cupcake. or cakeballs! :)